EN
Sustainable management of forests is essential nowadays. It assures permanent capability of a forest to complete, currently and in the future, all crucial functions such as protective, economic and social without any harm to other ecosystems, both at local (municipality, county, voivodship) and also national levels, and consequently the global one. Forest management is above all conducted by the State Forests (National Forest Holding), and by owners of private forests. Neither the State Forests, nor private enterprises implement social economy activity as their main objectives. Nevertheless, the forest historically and currently, fosters the implementation of social economy assumptions including social entrepreneurship. The aim of the article is to identify the actions and functions of forest management fostering the development of social economy. While writing the article the authors used the inductive and deductive approaches on the basis of available literature on the subject of economics and forestry. Moreover, the information was gathered through face-to-face interviews and on the basis of case study analyses. The obtained results made it possible to identify and describe the common areas of forest management and social economy.